Cohabiting: Law Commission Report

Baroness Scotland of Asthal Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, when the previous Administration opposed my noble friend’s Private Member’s Bill on this they said that they were going to wait for research on the Scottish experience. We have looked at some of the preliminary outcomes of that research without seeing anything conclusive to persuade us to move more quickly on this issue. My noble friend makes the point, however, as do the Law Commission and many others, that there are confusions and injustices as the law stands. We have not ruled out the Law Commission’s recommendations for all time; we have simply decided that we are not going to do that during this Parliament.

[Baroness Scotland of Asthal]

My Lords, can the Minister give us a little more detail about why the Government did not find the Scottish research persuasive? Can he also say what the basis of any new review would be if the Government were not minded to take into account the very detailed work that the Law Commission was asked to undertake—it has now taken that into account—and why the Government think that the separation of the two issues is possible?

[Lord McNally]

First, the previous Administration did not proceed on this issue when they had the power to do so, although my noble friend Lord Lester had raised it. The Scottish scheme is different in various respects to the proposals for England and Wales made by the Law Commission, and the report on the Scottish scheme, which is only preliminary, acknowledged that its findings necessarily provide only an early-days impression at a time when there is relatively little reported case law under the 2000 Act, with judges and practitioners still feeling their way. The conclusion in the report is that the evidence to date in Scotland means that a similar scheme in England and Wales is unlikely to place significant additional demands on the courts system. The main message to concentrate on is that a significant period of change is due in the family justice system, which we are using to consider legislation in general. We have taken the Scottish research on board, but it is, as I say, rather narrow, very early and not enough to persuade us that we should implement the Law Commission’s recommendations now.